With storage as cheap as it is nowadays, a 15 MB FLAC audio file vs. a 3 MB MP3 really doesn’t matter anymore. Those 12 MB cost nothing to store.
And to be honest, in cases where storage does matter, a 320 kbps MP3 is just a waste of space. A VBR MP3 with average bitrate around 200 kbps makes way more sense and nobody can tell the difference between that and 320 kbps in a double blind test.
So just maintain FLAC or other lossless for sharing music and transcode down when needed.
But like, why? I’m going to be listening to the lossy version on my phone 90% of the time anyways, and my headphones are not good enough to truly appreciate lossless either. It doesn’t matter that I have over 4tb of storage on my PC, I still don’t wanna waste an extra 50GB for no tangible benefit, when I could use the same extra 50GB to more than double my lossy music collection if I wanted.
If you store lossy on your PC you will lose quality if you transcode to a lower bitrate. If you don’t transcode, then you will be using more space on your phone.
That’s why.
If you don’t want to transcode and just want to download and play, then full lossy is easier. But you are going to be using more space on your phone.
This is my take as well. Storage is cheap. I have thousands of albums and about 40,000 tracks currently and it consumes about 400GB. It’s really not that much storage, considering.
So you don’t listen to music unless you’re at home? Or do you choose a subset of your library to put on your phone? That would be terribly annoying for me.
In my case, a self hosted streaming server works wonders. Plex with Pleaxamp, Jellyfin, Navidrome, Airsonic, any of them will stream to your phone while out and about.
I live in the rural midwest with spotty cell service. All of those services support manual offline syncing to store music on your phone. I set Plexamp to stream lossy over cellular, and it doesn’t take long to cache an entire playlist when I do have a signal.
It’s easy bro just maintain a server with redundant disks and a reverse proxy so you can stream music over your unlimited cellular data connection that I’m totally sure you have access to in your region.
Yeah, but that argument was compelling in 2005.
With storage as cheap as it is nowadays, a 15 MB FLAC audio file vs. a 3 MB MP3 really doesn’t matter anymore. Those 12 MB cost nothing to store.
And to be honest, in cases where storage does matter, a 320 kbps MP3 is just a waste of space. A VBR MP3 with average bitrate around 200 kbps makes way more sense and nobody can tell the difference between that and 320 kbps in a double blind test.
So just maintain FLAC or other lossless for sharing music and transcode down when needed.
file size absolutely matters when you have thousands of songs lol, my music is a significant chunk of my phone’s SD card capacity
That’s why you should transcode to 200 or even 160 kbps for your phone.
But the master archive should be in flac if possible.
A 2 TB disk is less than $100 nowadays.
Now that’s dedication.
But like, why? I’m going to be listening to the lossy version on my phone 90% of the time anyways, and my headphones are not good enough to truly appreciate lossless either. It doesn’t matter that I have over 4tb of storage on my PC, I still don’t wanna waste an extra 50GB for no tangible benefit, when I could use the same extra 50GB to more than double my lossy music collection if I wanted.
If you store lossy on your PC you will lose quality if you transcode to a lower bitrate. If you don’t transcode, then you will be using more space on your phone.
That’s why.
If you don’t want to transcode and just want to download and play, then full lossy is easier. But you are going to be using more space on your phone.
In which case we circle back around to “storage is cheap”. Music is the only substantial space hog on my phone.
So you want to waste space on your phone to save space on your PC.
An odd choice, but you do you.
This is my take as well. Storage is cheap. I have thousands of albums and about 40,000 tracks currently and it consumes about 400GB. It’s really not that much storage, considering.
40… 40,000…? My god I thought I had a lot of music downloaded, but I haven’t even broken into the thousands yet
So you don’t listen to music unless you’re at home? Or do you choose a subset of your library to put on your phone? That would be terribly annoying for me.
In my case, a self hosted streaming server works wonders. Plex with Pleaxamp, Jellyfin, Navidrome, Airsonic, any of them will stream to your phone while out and about.
That will work great if you live your entire life in cities.
I spend a lot of time in places with no cell service.
I live in the rural midwest with spotty cell service. All of those services support manual offline syncing to store music on your phone. I set Plexamp to stream lossy over cellular, and it doesn’t take long to cache an entire playlist when I do have a signal.
So then you’re back to the problem where you require more storage than what your phone has.
What problem? 200 tracks times 4mb/track equals 1Gb. If you can’t spare a couple gigs of storage, you need to delete some apps off your phone.
The guy said he has 400gb of music, that’s what we were talking about
Yes, I listen to music and podcasts everywhere. I use airsonic-advanced, currently.
It’s easy bro just maintain a server with redundant disks and a reverse proxy so you can stream music over your unlimited cellular data connection that I’m totally sure you have access to in your region.
Plex or other local system streaming service, you know, using the tech that’s existed for over a decade now?
No need to store jack shit on my device unless I know I’m going to a low reception area m
Bro I’m poor. I make the compromises I have to make.
It starts adding up when your collection is in many thousands of albums.
I get what you are saying though